Powerwalls stuck in standby when solar power is no longer producing

[LookWhoItIs]

Hello all,

I'm in the EU and I had my system installed back in August. I have a 6Kw system with 2 Powerwall 2's installed (the plus are not available here yet I guess). Everything is turned on and it's been functioning 90% perfectly except for the PowerWalls refuse to come out of standby in non blackout scenarios. The situation:

1. The solar works and powers the house and exports to grid perfectly fine.
2. Simulating a blackout by cutting off main service works, and the system goes into Blackout Mode
3. An actual outage works and my Powerwalls power the home
4. Simulating a blackout via the gateway off-grid mode half works, and is either a symptom or the main issue. See more below
5. Batteries charge no probs when an outage occurs or I force off grid mode and solar power comes back following sunny day
6. Self consumption does NOT work. When the sun starts going down or is fully gone, the Powerwalls never come out of standby and I'm always pulling from the grid. They absolutely refuse to power the house

My installer has already come back on scene and replaced my main service cable that goes out to the street for the meter (in Italy our meter's are roadside) with a thicker gauge cable, saying that the few times they've had this happen, swapping the cable out for a thicker one and loading higher impedance configs kick the system into gear. They did this and didn't work, called Tesla support and asked them to "force load" the new files, and it's been about 2 weeks and the situation has not changed.

Main Issue
Going back to above #4 in the list, if I log into my gateway via it's static IP and click the "go off-grid" button in the gateway dashboard, it works. I run off the Powerwalls just fine and they power my home in "off-grid" mode. This is what I've resorted to doing to avoid using the grid the whole time the system has gone PTO, hoping for a fix to this extremely aggravating issue. Now if instead I go into the Tesla app on my phone, and use the "go off-grid" setting there, it FAILS, and says my home is consuming more power than the Powerwalls can handle, which of course, is not true. I never push past the 5,5Kw continuous limit and have tried this even with extremely small loads of 200w, 100w and even turning everything in the house off and having only a single light on, and it still throws me this error and won't go off-grid via the app. This is where I believe this is either a symptom of whatever is wrong, or a potential cause of the issue. I'm no wiring expert on Tesla Energy Systems, so I don't know if some incorrect wiring can lead to the system working this far but then causing some heartache in the Gateway's computer that makes it avoid discharing the powerwalls in self consumption mode. I've told this to my installer, who is now going to get back to me as they've never seen this problem before.

This thread is exactly what is happening to me, except for this person the system worked for 9 months and for me it has never worked. I've already power cycles the Powerwalls themselves by leaving them off for 10 mins, and I've hit the reset button on the Gateway as well to let the system reboot, and the problem persists. I'm an IT guy so by nature I like fixing stuff on my own, so if I can do that without needing my installer on site again I'd rather just fix it myself (and avoid Tesla's support based on all the horror stories I've read on here).

Anyone seen this before and have any suggestions on what to do, besides waiting for my installer to come back and look at the system again?

Thanks!

 

[Tag Striker]

This sounds exactly like what was happening to my system immediately after receiving PTO. The only difference being that my solar panels wouldn't turn on because I have the powerwall+. Although Tesla never confirmed I believe my situation was caused by an over-voltage from the grid. When I logged in to the Tesla system directly I went to 192.168.91.1/api/system_status and saw that 'Grid = Uncompliant' and a several errors of over voltage. Maybe check that? Mine kept getting errors for about two weeks before it either resolved itself or Tesla had the power company lower their voltage.

 

[LookWhoItIs]

This sounds exactly like what was happening to my system immediately after receiving PTO. The only difference being that my solar panels wouldn't turn on because I have the powerwall+. Although Tesla never confirmed I believe my situation was caused by an over-voltage from the grid. When I logged in to the Tesla system directly I went to 192.168.91.1/api/system_status and saw that 'Grid = Uncompliant' and a several errors of over voltage. Maybe check that? Mine kept getting errors for about two weeks before it either resolved itself or Tesla had the power company lower their voltage.

Thanks for your sharing your experience. I've hit the api to see what json it spits out and it's been all over the place I didn't know whether it was relevant enough or not. It sounds like it is possibly something my installer will have to sort out with Tesla and the utility company. I may have the opposite problem but currently, don't know what it is. During the summer my area gets extremely low voltage that sometimes dips as far low as 200 and even 190s. Right now though that isn't much of an issue since summer is over, but I'm assuming this is data Tesla will have on my gateway on how it reports to know what to do. Italy...is a chore and half to get people to fix stuff for you so I'm already lamenting how long this might take to get fixed.

 

[LookWhoItIs]

I checked that api endpoint just now and my pinv_grid_state is Grid_Qualifying. I do see some entries in the grid_faults array that are

PINV_a008_vfCheckRocof
{ "name": "PINV_alertID", "value": "PINV_a008_vfCheckRocof" }, { "name": "PINV_alertType", "value": "Warning" }

Not sure what those mean, but I'm assuming that's my problem? Once I convert the timestamp in the entry to an actual date, they do seem to be all recent. I'm assuming this array only stores the last few ones and overwrites the others since there's never more than 4 or 5 in this.

 

[Tag Striker]

Although the grid faults are different than mine I agree its likely causing the issue. Quick Google search of RoCof shows that its an acronym for rate of change of frequency. I suspect your system is unable or unwilling to connect itself to the grid because the grid frequency is either out of it's set range or changing to much. My system would work properly when the pinv_grid_state = Grid_Compliant and would go to standby when the voltage went over its set limits. I recommend you check the pinv_grid_state regularly and see if it changes, when it does show compliant then see if the system works properly. I'm sorry this is happening to you, unfortunately I have no idea what, who, or how mine was actually resolved. I suspect Tesla and the power company had to fix something since the errors all stopped but they never responded to me, just said 'your system is functioning now, call us if you have any other issues'

 

[LookWhoItIs]

Although the grid faults are different than mine I agree its likely causing the issue. Quick Google search of RoCof shows that its an acronym for rate of change of frequency. I suspect your system is unable or unwilling to connect itself to the grid because the grid frequency is either out of it's set range or changing to much. My system would work properly when the pinv_grid_state = Grid_Compliant and would go to standby when the voltage went over its set limits. I recommend you check the pinv_grid_state regularly and see if it changes, when it does show compliant then see if the system works properly. I'm sorry this is happening to you, unfortunately I have no idea what, who, or how mine was actually resolved. I suspect Tesla and the power company had to fix something since the errors all stopped but they never responded to me, just said 'your system is functioning now, call us if you have any other issues'

Nah man you've been wonderfully helpful as now I know what to give my installer (and Tesla if I can reach out to them myself) to get it figured out. I'm hoping Tesla can just change some settings because my utility company won't give 2 turds about fixing their problems. I don't know who wins that stalemate. If you figure anything else out or anyone else has some more info, always welcome!

This forum has been a godsend since being a Tesla owner.

 

[k4rsohi]

Hi, did you end up fixing your issue? I'm having the same problems (and am also in Italy). The technician also changed the main meter cable which fixed some other stability problems I had with my system but didn't ultimately fix the powerwall never discharging issue.

 

[protony]

Hello,
another Italian with this issue, or at least a very similar one.

I've one Powerwall 2 and the Photovoltaic system, Power configured in Self Power mode with a backup percentage set to 5% from the app. It's a configuration to try to use as much as possible the solar energy produced during the day.

In my case Powerwall 2 is not constantly stuck in standby, instead it sometimes discharges the battery to power the house, and sometime the house pulls from the grid: it keeps jumping between these two states without a clear pattern (one state may last a few minutes and then it switches to the other state and stay there for some minutes and so on...).

When the Powerwall correctly powers the house by discharging the battery I can see Grid_Compliant in pinv_grid_state, when instead the problem occurs, I can read Grid_Qualifying in the pinv_grid_state.

I also have PINV_a008_vfCheckRocof in the grid_faults entries with epoch timestamps corresponding to the time when the problem occurs.

Also, this behaviour is not happening every day, I can have a few lucky days when the Powerwall works great without giving the problem.

Has anybody solved this issue? How?

Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

[LookWhoItIs]

You also may have a problem with Enel's terrible quality of their infrastructure. Tesla had my techs come out multiple times and they changed my grounding and everything and despite the system locally being in top working order, the outside quality was just too terrible for the system to want to sync. They want back to Tesla who would then rely on the only remaining solution of "forcing" the system to discharge and ignore the outside line. I don't know what that means exactly but that's what they do when all else fails and Enel's infrastructure is causing issues.

Ever since they did that forced config push to my system, everything has been working really great. See about doing the same thing, contact Tesla have them review the system and they may need to do the same for you.

 

[protony]

Thanks!
When you say ""forcing" the system to discharge and ignore the outside line", do you mean that you manually have to go off-grid from the app? or, instead, everything works automatically?
Do youknow if Tesla (or you Installer) has loaded to Powerwall a special firmware to handle high impedance situations?

 

[LookWhoItIs]

Thanks!
When you say ""forcing" the system to discharge and ignore the outside line", do you mean that you manually have to go off-grid from the app? or, instead, everything works automatically?
Do youknow if Tesla (or you Installer) has loaded to Powerwall a special firmware to handle high impedance situations?

They loaded several different configurations for impedance and none of them worked. I was just told when all that fails they just "force" it. I don't know if it's custom firmware loaded or if there is some secret non public setting in the system they turn on, all that does is it just tells the system everything is "OK" and normal function will happen. Since they did that, and the configuration changes stuck, my system just behaves normally. No one needs to come out for that if it comes to it, your installer should just tell Tesla nothing works and the high impedance steps failed, then they say they will "force it", and then you'll see your system begin to work eventually after they do whatever they do.